~ IAN ~

With its high walls of white stone, the Church of Lightness was an imposing figure in the Essegena skyline. Concealed as it was from the valley’s township by trees and cunning placement, when it lurched into Ian’s view it caught him momentarily short. A wave of doubt washed at him. Why? Lightness Skerrett had been happy to greet him before. Churches were meant to be happy places, bastions of worship. What about this one gave that uneasy sensation?

Perhaps it was the lie he was hiding. Skerrett didn’t strike him as the sort to take being lied to kindly.

He’d been reading when the news came to him. That book kept calling his name until he submitted, and he was knee-deep in the tribulations of Emonie, who had been cast out of her village for hunting more game than her husband, and who had responded by stealing and butchering every last animal in the woods around the village so the people there had no food to eat. Emonie was halfway through dying when Sergeant Pratley’s knock disturbed him.

At first he’d been annoyed at the disturbance. When Sergeant Pratley was done, he’d had no appetite for reading.

Caroline. She was all he could think about, all through a sleepless night. His heart had grown heavy, and it had called him back to the church. The call was so tempting.

Of course, Millie wanted to go with him, and he couldn’t have her following him around while he prayed to whatever gods were listening for some sort of sign that his actions had been worthwhile, that his soul wasn’t condemned for a wasted action. The arrangement they’d come to was simple. Millie was to seek out Molly Bradshaw, befriend her, find out what her true motives were. The Bradshaws were planning something, that much Ian was certain of.

In the meantime, he’d be free to speak to Lightness Skerrett.

Beside him, Millie grimaced and squeezed his hand. “It looks ominous today.”

So it wasn’t just him. That was good. But that still left the question of ‘why’. He stared up at the church as they climbed the dirt track towards it, trying to work out what was amiss, and the more he stared the more it seemed to take on an angry form. The masonry was positively seething.

Millie was still clutching his hand tight, her nails digging into his palm. He pecked her gently on the cheek, and she loosened her grip a little. “That must mean we’ve offended the Gods somehow,” he said. “I told you to ease up on the sinning.”

“It was just the one orgy,” she said, gamely continuing the joke. Her timing could have been better, mind. They crested the hill and came into view of an ashen-haired acolyte who was well-placed to hear only the last word of Millie’s sentence. He stared wildly at her in response.

All the acolytes seemed to be about today. Two women in matching woollen pinafores crossed the track before them, carrying baskets full of gravel in their hands. Lightness Skerrett had explained that particular ritual last time, something to do with a story from somewhere in the holy texts. It had gone in one ear and straight out the other. Ian wanted to say it was in tribute to a woman who’d been sentenced to do the same, long ago in the ancient times, but he wasn’t sure. And if it was, he couldn’t remember anything about her. Perhaps she was a priestess, perhaps a farmhand. She may even have been a queen. Her name might have been Hanna—he could swear there was a Hanna somewhere—but it could just as easily have been quite literally any other name.

Thankfully, Millie didn’t ask him what was happening. Or he’d have had to make something up.

Lightness Skerrett was waiting for him at the carved door, his golden beard tightly cropped and wearing a new scar under his left eye. He bowed his head at Millie. “How wonderful to meet you, my dear,” he said to her, and then, to Ian: “Could it be that I’ve seen her hereabouts before?”

“You might very well have done,” Ian confirmed. “It’s not her first time up the hill.”

Millie joined her voice to the chorus. “I was nervous,” she said, nodding her head. “I was worried I’d be intruding.” She wrung her hands together as she spoke as if to spell out that she was still nervous. Though more about Ian’s task than the possibility of being a hanger-on amongst the faithful, he thought.

If Lightness Skerrett noticed her hands, he chose not to acknowledge it. “There was no need to be nervous,” he said, working that smooth tongue of his. “We’re always happy for newcomers to hear the call of the Gods. Especially when they’ve so clearly dressed for piety.” He gestured at her dress. At Ian’s instruction, she’d put on a salmon-pink sack of an outfit, of a cloth so rough it made him recoil every time he laid hands on her. It was as close as she could get to the uniform of the most faithful, the devotees and the chaste. It would help to ingratiate her with Lightness Skerrett’s zealots.

She blushed a pretty colour to match, and Lightness Skerrett’s eyes narrowed.

“The Lightness has still to kiss you, my dear. You should not blush, unless you plan to prostitute yourself.”

“Sorry,” she stammered, turning an even deeper shade.

“Perhaps it would do Millie good to have a look around and get a feel for the place,” said Ian, before she dug herself in further. Skerrett, thankfully, nodded.

“Quite right. My apologies, dear, it was not just of me to attack you, when you’ve sought out the right path. I would kiss your hand.” She held her left hand out. Lightness Skerrett took it and kissed the fingers gently. He waved an idle finger, and one of the pinafored women came over. This one had dusky skin and hair which hung in braided strands halfway down her back.

“Lightness?” The dusky woman spoke with a voice like a mouse.

“My dear Jael, this girl would like to know the wonders of the faith. Why don’t you show her around our pasture?”

“But of course,” purred Jael, taking hold of Millie’s hand. “There is much to love here. I know you’ll find it hard to return to the drear of the valley.” She disappeared to the depths of Lightness Skerrett’s vast grounds, and Millie with her.

Skerrett gave a smile, and fingered the pendant around his neck. “Come,” he said to Ian, and led him into the church.

If the outside was ominous, there was a power to the main chamber of the church that worked counter to it. The architecture here never failed to take his breath away. It had the feel of something greater than the hands that built it, as though it had tapped into a connection of some sort. Ian had read about infrasound causing strong emotional resonances before, often bringing about dread in the basements of really old buildings. It could be that something similar was at play here. Whatever it was, he could see how easy it might be to believe that a higher being walked within these walls. Certainly any unassuming child, not worldly wise already, could be brought to faith with a single visit.

And then there was the smell. The great chamber of the church was adorned with censers, each one emitting the summery fragrances of the old country. This was the scent of fresh-trimmed grass, of warm lakes and gurgling streams and the singing of a songbird. This was the shade of the dovetree, and the love of the pretty girl lying beneath it with him. It hadn’t been fragrant before. This was new.

“What’s the smell?” he asked.

“Every candle is different,” said Lightness Skerrett. “Lavender and honeysuckle, heart-thorn and marshgrasses. Together they make the most pastoral of aromas. We must always surround ourselves with the kiss of the earth, to remind us of the paradise from whence we came.”

It brought to mind a lake, still and glistening in the sunlight. A lake could hold such evil shadows within its depths, but in the height of the summertime, from the safe vantage of the dry ground above the surface, it could be so sweet. “It smells of home,” Ian murmured.

He was taken by Skerrett into the Lightness’ solar, where several acolytes stood, and there fed of food in plenty. There were all manner of fruits piled up in a silver bowl, bulging red berries and juicy yellow-gold ones. All his favourites were there, and some he didn’t recognise at all. He picked out one the size of his thumb, a strange aggregate of violet drupelets which looked as though they might burst into juice at the mere pressure of his fingers. It exploded in his mouth. The flavour was sharp, almost tart, and curiously cooling.

“I’ve not seen these before,” he said, holding another one so Lightness Skerrett could see what he was talking about.

From behind Skerrett, Tim Fawley spoke. “A local berry,” he said. “We suspect it may be a poisonous one. I’ll be watching to see if you die.”

Ian gulped, but Lightness Skerrett chuckled. “Excuse Tim his jokes, Master Fitzhenry. It isn’t often he has cause to make them. In actual fact, that is the product of a certain strain of thistle found on Tol Manase, rare enough even there. I had some samples brought here with me at great expense.”

“Are they important?”

“No, not especially. But the flavour is divine, as I’m sure you’re discovering.”

“Why waste them on me? If they cost so much?”

Lightness Skerrett laughed heartily. “You’re a friend of the church, Master Fitzhenry, and you’re a man of this universe. The fruits are yours to enjoy as much as they are mine.”

He helped himself to another, and another; it was almost unconscious the way he filled himself on these luxuries. He caught himself when half of the fruits were gone—they were probably there for the benefit of everyone, and there he was scoffing himself silly. But neither Lightness Skerrett nor Tim Fawley seemed bothered. They were watching him with expressions of calm disinterest. So sod it, he thought, and continued to eat.

“I’m glad you have come back,” said Skerrett, as Ian finished the last of those drupes. “I have a request to make of you.” He pushed away the silver bowl and handed Ian a damp felt cloth. “And a confession to make. I did not travel to the edge of the universe for the scenery, and neither did any of the other devoted. I came here to establish my church beyond the reach of the Unity, where their claws cannot grasp us.”

Ian swallowed his final mouthful. “That sounds sinister,” he said.

“It’s not. Far from it. The Unity has pressed down on our freedoms for five hundred years, out of spite for our difference, and out of fear for the truths we espouse. Wars were fought to restore those freedoms, and some were granted. No longer are we prohibited from venerating our chosen saints, for instance. Alas, many of those liberties we enjoyed during the Era of Kings remain stolen from us, and the passage of centuries has damped the fire of revolt. My peers don’t care to fight for what they don’t even remember.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Why not? If it’s so important, surely they’d still want what they used to have.”

Lightness Skerrett smiled a sad smile. “You’d think so. But time presses ever on, and close on twenty generations have come since the death of free religion. This is where your help becomes so important. This might be a Unity colony, but it is not a part of the Unity, not yet. It is not beholden to the draconian laws of the Unity.”

“I can’t make the laws,” said Ian.

“But you have a friend who can. The Governor. If you could persuade him to pay us a visit here, I have every faith that we can convince him to help.”

Ian hesitated. “Is that all? You want me to get Chris to come up here and meet with you?”

“That is all,” Skerrett nodded. “I would be very grateful for that.”

Why not, Ian thought. “I’ll speak to him,” he said. Something about being within the church’s walls made him feel at ease. There was no niggling worry for Caroline, none of that leaden guilt that had followed him for his adulthood. Just peace.

He could stay here forever.

Just then, the door opened. Millie came in, beaming, accompanied by Molly Bradshaw. Molly was scarcely recognisable as the General’s daughter. Her long hair was knotted into frayed braids, absent of the floral clip she was often seen wearing. There was no make-up on her face, save for her lips, which were painted blood red. A long white tunic, stained almost beige, ran to bare, dirty feet; when she walked, the fabric moved to reveal a nasty cut on the top of her foot.

“Are you hurt, Molly?” As much as he found her father loathsome, Ian had no ill feeling towards the girl. But she smiled politely back at him, and shook her head.

“An accident,” she said. “I fell awkwardly into the river. The rocks on the bed there are sharp.” It sounded like bullshit to him, but he didn’t push the matter.

“I hope you showed our visitor around,” said Skerrett. “She’s in need of some redemption, after all. We mustn’t scare her off.”

Molly bowed her head. “I tried to be nice.”

“She was a wonderful guide,” Millie interjected. “A delight.”

“Good.” Lightness Skerrett clapped his hands together. “And will you be joining us here?”

Millie paused for a second. Ian tried to discreetly signal to her—’no, not yet’—but he couldn’t get the right line of sight. But then she shook her head. “I’d like time to think, if that’s okay,” she said. “It’s a big commitment.”

“You are very wise,” said Skerrett. “And always welcome to say the words. This can be your home at any time you so choose, dear.”

“Thank-you, Lightness,” said Millie, midway through an awkward curtsy.

“And what about you, Master Fitzhenry? Can I tempt you?”

Ian shook his head. “You don’t want a man like me in your congregation. Too many demons.”

“Too many demons?” Lightness Skerrett seemed stumped. “Can such a thing be possible?”

“Believe me, Lightness, I’ve done bad.” He didn’t really feel like going into detail. He just wanted to move away from the topic, before he found himself accidentally joining.

Molly lifted her head. “Perhaps we can expunge some of that bad,” she said. “Before the rot sets in.”

“A wonderful idea,” said Skerrett. “No man is too far gone to be pulled back.”

“I am,” Ian muttered. But the acolytes were up to something. Two sullen maidens, grey-skinned Silent Jen and the gaunt, flat-chested Boneskin Bets, sidled into the solar, carrying between them a pewter bowl. A metal shelf crudely stapled to the base of the bowl cradled a lit fire, which had the bottom of the bowl glowing ruddy with the heat. The permeating odour of cinnamon came with them.

He momentarily locked eyes with Millie, before his attention was drawn to the stone idol Tim Fawley was holding. It was a woman carved of marble, perhaps two feet high. She was beautiful, her soft features clothed beneath a stone facsimile of the finest flowing silk gown that ever could have been dreamt up. Fawley held her over the bowl.

And suddenly, there was a knife. Ian didn’t know where it had come from, but Skerrett was holding it. Boneskin Bets outstretched her arm to meet it, palm of the hand facing up. The knife cleaved her flesh easily, making a deep rip four inches or so across. Boneskin Bets whimpered, and forced herself silent. She turned her cut hand over. The blood from the wound spilled down, drenching the idol.

Skerrett stepped back, eyes closed, and spoke in an affected deep tone. “The chaste and the good can by their blood avail you.”

As if on cue, Tim Fawley let go of the idol, which fell into the warm bowl. The hiss and the splash told Ian that it was full of water, and a surge of steam gushed out.

At once, the church seemed to gain the weight of a fierce storm. The walls darkened even as he looked at them. Was that thunder cracking? Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Millie slink towards the exit. One of the acolytes reached for her, but Silent Jen shook her head and Millie was allowed to depart.

“There’s darkness in you. Your soul is black.” When Skerrett spoke it was more guttural than normal, the sound coming from somewhere deep within his chest.

Ian nodded. “The things I’ve done... Is there a hell, Lightness? Tell me if there is. It’s where I’m bound.”

“No. No hell will receive you, Ian Fitzhenry, but for the earthly hell we all must walk. The day will come when a great torrent will baptise you. The rain will fall then like tears, tears for your dear friend. Oh, the pain will be great.” Skerrett seethed, his breaths rasping. He fought for them, one breath at a time. Then calmness overtook him, and his breathing grew gentle again. “Your sins will be washed clean,” he said, “and your demons drowned.”

Drowned. What did Skerrett know?

All of a sudden, his hand was wet, his entire arm drenched. Dani. She was there, lying on her belly. Her sodden hair was matted like ropes in his hand. Funny—it hadn’t felt so heavy when it was real. He’d held her until she’d stopped writhing, and his arms were aching, but when he let her go her head bobbed back up, and she spluttered for air. He’d just let her catch her breath. She was disoriented to begin with. Then she looked his way, and he knew at once that she hated him. There was fear and fury in those eyes. She’d had just time enough to spit out one word—her last word—before he pushed her back to the deep. “Why?”

Afterwards, as he dug out a grave for her at the top of the hill where all her favourite flowers grew, he’d told himself that he hated every second of it. It was a monstrous task, but one that had to be done. That didn’t mean he’d derived any pleasure from it. He told himself that lie—over and over again, until by the time Dani Carrigan had been committed to the earth he actually believed it. But the truth was that he’d found it exhilarating, to take her life. He’d enjoyed it. That was the worst bit about it.

“Master Fitzhenry?” The hand on his shoulder was Molly Bradshaw’s. Her voice broke the memory. Dani disappeared, and he was back in Skerrett’s solar.

“I’m fine,” he said, hurried, so nobody would press the point. Dani was his secret. She existed for him alone, and he wasn’t about to share her with anyone—least of all a bunch of zealots.

Molly furrowed her brow, her red lips forming a lopsided smile. “You went all stiff,” she said. “I thought maybe you were having a fit. That used to happen to Mother sometimes.” He knew that Molly Bradshaw’s mother was dead, succumbing after years of struggle to a long-term disease. He certainly hoped he wasn’t displaying the same symptoms. Dying was the last thing he wanted to do. He’d have no way of escaping from the ghosts if he was dead.

Looking at Molly, he couldn’t help but see traces of Dani—Dani as she was, before the water took her. She hadn’t seemed so at the time, but she was so young. If only she hadn’t caught Chris’ eye, she might have lived a long, fulfilling life. She couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Molly. Ian tried to imagine how the valley might react should Molly die. It was unfathomable. For so young a girl to lose her life would be a cruel injustice indeed. General Bradshaw would be crushed, half of the women in the valley would spend the week weeping.

Just as the women of Borrowood had wept for Daniella Carrigan.

He got to his feet and made a beeline for the exit. “I’m very sorry,” he said, when Skerrett stood to follow. “I have to run. I think I ate something dodgy.” The sea of acolytes parted so that he could dash between them. He ran all the way to the valley, scarcely daring to blink, trying to forget what Dani looked like.

Her ghost followed him all the way.

Millie caught up to him at the bottom of the hill. He’d stopped, breathless, against a tree to rest. At some point while he rested Dani had faded away. The darkness around her had lifted. A little brown critter watched him from the tree, one of the ones people were calling mettysnatchers. He was smiling at it like a prime numpty when Millie found him.

“Well?” He looked at her expectantly. Her face was stained with the faint smudges of a foundation that had been crudely and haphazardly wiped off.

“No dirt,” she said.

He frowned. “You definitely found the right girl? The one who came to Skerrett’s solar with you?”

“Molly Bradshaw. Yeah. She was the one you described, wasn’t she? Big, haughty.” She leaned in close to whisper in Ian’s ear. “Completely insane.”

He laughed. “Insane how?”

“I asked her how it was she came to faith. It’s not from her father, that much is obvious. I thought perhaps she’d go off on one about some handsome proselytiser with a honeyed tongue who cornered her in the street or something.” That had been Ian’s instinct as well, that or she was faking it as part of her dad’s scheming. It wouldn’t have run against the modus operandi of the Church of Lightness. They liked to send their attractive men out to find vulnerable young women to convert. Skerrett was getting older, but no doubt he’d been quite the draw in his younger days—and his words were certainly convincing enough. Ian was half-sold on the stories himself.

But if that wasn’t the net that had caught Molly Bradshaw, what was?

“So what is it then?”

Millie started to answer, but as she opened her mouth she began to giggle, to such a degree that she couldn’t speak. She chittered away, bent nearly double, hands on her knees, trying to vocalise an explanation for her mirth. Every time she tried it started her off again.

Ian kissed her on the mouth, and held the kiss for a few seconds as her eyes widened. When he released her, the giggles had stopped. She looked at him for a second, then reached in for another kiss. “Sorry,” she said, when she was done, “but I just find it so absurd.”

“Tell me.”

“She reckons she met the Gods.” The laughter threatened again, but Millie swallowed it down. “Like, the deities themselves, in the flesh. They came to talk to her, apparently. Isn’t that insane?”

He mulled it for a second. “Could be mental illness. Delusions. Easy to convince herself it’s the Gods she’s spoken to, and if the church wants to encourage that belief they can get themselves a free acolyte. Of course they’re gonna tell her what she wants to hear.” The idea of Molly Bradshaw, General Mark Bradshaw’s blood and heir, being a crackpot was sweet. Ian was a child again for a moment, rubbing his hands together gleefully. “Oh, I hope that’s the case. It fucks Bradshaw’s ‘bloodline’ talk right over.” He rolled his tongue over his teeth, doubtful. “I still reckon it’s a trick though.”

“No, it can’t be. She genuinely believes. I spoke to her.”

“Millie, the Bradshaws begin lying and scheming before they leave the womb. It’s in their blood. What she says is probably as far from the truth as you can get. The sooner you understand that, the better.”

She pulled away from him. “So why did you make me go and interrogate her?”

“I didn’t make you,” he said, chuckling. But she didn’t share the joke.

“It sure seemed like you did from where I was standing. You had me waste my time for nothing.”

He shook his head. There was no need for her to cause a scene. “It’s only for nothing in hindsight. I didn’t know what Molly was going to say, she might well have confirmed my suspicions.”

“Oh, and that would have been worth it?”

“Of course it would.”

“Why?” Millie was stood with her arms folded tight across her breasts, backing steadily away from Ian. “Would she suddenly be trustworthy? If I told you what you wanted to hear, that would have meant she was telling the truth, but since I told you something else it means she must be lying?”

He sighed. “Millie, I’m not blaming you for anything. You don’t know the Bradshaws.”

“And you do?” He wasn’t aware a person’s eyebrow could rise as high as hers had. “Have you entertained the idea that perhaps the reality is that you don’t know Molly Bradshaw as well as you like to think, and not that I’m so naïve that I can’t see the wool being pulled over my eyes? Did you only tolerate me because you thought I was just a poor little fool girl?”

Ian tried to say something about her being unfair and unreasonable, but she didn’t seem prepared to listen to it. She stormed away as he sputtered. And he was left alone, wondering why Millie Farmer had blown up so suddenly.

Because it definitely wasn’t anything he did.